Subsidy Publishers vs. Self-Publishing

Hello, all! Kimberly here from Jera Publishing. Today I am going to talk to you about the difference between subsidy publishers and self-publishing. Authors new to the self-publishing world often confuse subsidy publishing with self-publishing, but they are different. It doesn’t help that many subsidy publishers call themselves a “self-publishing” company and target self-publishers.

When you use a subsidy publisher, you pay them an upfront fee and they will provide you with services such as formatting and cover design. Most importantly, they will handle the ISBNs, printing, and distribution. In addition to the upfront fee, they will also take a cut of the profits when a book is sold and pay you royalties. This is the key difference!

When you self-publish, you will probably still hire someone to do the formatting, cover, etc., but you get your own ISBNs and take your book files to the printer and distributor yourself. When profits are made, you don’t share those profits with a publisher. Because you are not splitting the profits, you have the potential to make more money off your book sales.

You will know you are dealing with a subsidy publisher if they

assign one of their own ISBNs to your book;

charge an upfront fee;

take a cut of the book sales;

pay you royalties.

Some subsidy publishers will require that you sign over certain rights to your book, the price determination, or control of certain elements of your design. Make sure you read contracts and understand what they mean before signing up!

While subsidy publishing is not necessarily a bad thing, you do need to be aware of what that really means before you decide to go that route. Some subsidy publishers have a bad reputation, so do your research and search for complaints and testimonials if you decide to go with one instead of self-publishing.

Self-publishing specialist with over 15 years of experience, speaker, and coach. In my spare time, I can be found reading, hiking, taking photographs, riding my motorcycle, spoiling my three rescue cats, and decorating the Jera office with my collection of vintage typewriters.

2 Comments

B. B Shane
on July 29, 2015 at 5:37 PM

Thank you, Kimberlly,I opted for self-publishing, but fell on a formatter whose command of English hardly matched what I expected. Suffice it to add that I tried to be sympathetic and helpful, but after almost 2 years of patience gave up. I learned that there is no organisation that sets standards for formatters. Thus whatever wonderful help on the actual editing and marketing is offered, no one has yet tackled the first obstacle following the last word of a manuscript – how to find a reliable formatter with a good command of English usage.
There have been some excellent offers of self-help formatting, but I’m not sure whether I’m technically clever enough to tackle this. So, at the risk of repeating myself, how can one safely choose between ‘wonderful formatting offers’ on the web, and ‘wonderful formatting offers’ on the web?

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